The proposed $92 million facility, which would be the first facility in Illinois totally dedicated to inpatient and outpatient cardiac medical service, faces an uphill battle after being turned down in January by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. At that time, the project received only three of 15 votes.

But Edward executives have decided to bring the project back before the planning board later this spring, so Ryan's office is going ahead with its own review on a different track. "We want to know, from a financial point of view, whether the venture is fair to the charity, in this case being (Edward) hospital," said Floyd Perkins, an attorney in the charitable trusts division of Ryan's office, which is seeking a "fairness opinion."

Edward's heart project is different from others built in Illinois in recent years in that it is a for-profit joint venture with physicians, who would own part of the cardiac facility and share in its profits. In recent years, not-for-profit hospitals have typically paid for inpatient construction with cash or by using tax-exempt debt like Northwestern Memorial Hospital's new inpatient facility.

With Edward's heart facility, a charity would, in effect, be subsidizing an investment of physicians. The heart facility is also projected to lose more than $20 million in its first three years of operation, which could impact Edward's finances. All this raises questions in the attorney general's office.

"Should the charity do it and is it being done at arm's length?" asked Perkins. " Does this make sense for Edward to be making this kind of arrangement?"

For its part, Edward contends that the heart hospital isn't different from a surgery center it owns with 80 west suburban surgeons and Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield. Central DuPage is one of seven west suburban hospitals fighting Edward's project.

"We have successful joint ventures with physicians right now and we have modeled the heart hospital plan after the successes we have already established," Edward spokesman Brian Davis said.

Either that, or investor excitement about stocks trading on the Nasdaq is simply bleeding onto Northfield.

The Evanston-based biotechnology company's stock price has tripled in value in the past three months to an all-time high of $34.75 a share in late afternoon trading Monday before closing at $33.50.

Eager investors await Food and Drug Administration approval of Northfield's PolyHeme, which has been in late-stage clinical trials. Still, Northfield, hasn't even filed its application with the FDA, which takes its time with reviews and has been especially slow in evaluating blood products.

Northfield Chairman Richard DeWoskin wouldn't speculate on why the stock is suddenly on the rise or whether the firm was entertaining buyout offers.

"We are proceeding with our research and our analysis with our respect to filing [with the FDA] and we haven't concluded our analysis yet," DeWoskin said.

Abbott's tale: Abbott Laboratories has signed a research agreement with Paris-based Genset SA to discover genes associated with bipolar disorder and diabetes.

The deal, which calls for Abbott to provide an undisclosed amount of money to Genset to fund research, is Abbott's latest venture designed to boost what Wall Street considers a weak drugs pipeline.

In a separate announcement, Abbott said it has received approval to sell a new version of its respiratory antibiotic. Known as Biaxin XL, the product is a new once daily formulation, as opposed to traditional Biaxin, which typically has to be taken twice a day by patients and has $500 million in annual U.S. sales.